


Putting out Fires with Gasoline

by Laylah



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Backstory, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Melodramatic, Trauma, War, why am i posting this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-14
Updated: 2006-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kimberly opened his eyes, flat depthless yellow, and Roy knew immediately that he shouldn’t have asked. That he’d regret trying to be friendly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Putting out Fires with Gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> Themes taken from a K/R 20 Themes set that kiwikiwi and I found on a Japanese fanart site, early in 2006.

**1 Flame**

Fire wasn’t his favorite trick. It wasn’t even, he didn’t think, the thing he did best. He’d been living outside Central, working on the theory of flight, loving his life and his work. He’d been close to an important breakthrough; he could feel it. But the state needed him for the war effort, and the state funded his research, so here he was: tugging awkwardly at the uniform where its collar didn’t fit right, uncomfortably quiet, stepping off the supply convoy with the other State Alchemists who’d just been called up to active duty against Ishvar. Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist.

 **2 Crimson**

“Crimson,” Roy said when the introductions were done, studying his new bunkmate. “That’s not very descriptive. What do you do?”

Kimberly opened his eyes, flat depthless yellow, and Roy knew immediately that he shouldn’t have asked. That he’d regret trying to be friendly.

“I kill,” Kimberly said with a beatific smile, something caged and hungry and _inhuman_ in his tone. He sat on his bunk, legs crossed, and rested his hands on his knees in a mockery of meditation. He had transmutation circles tattooed on his palms. “I kill, Mustang. And now that you’re here, that’s what you do, too.”

 **3 Lie**

He kept trying to be friendly, though. Nobody else got any closer to Kimberly than they had to, even the other alchemists, but Roy couldn’t quite help it. “So, what did you do before this?” he asked over dinner on the second night.

“Military research,” Kimberly shrugged, sopping up gravy with a piece of stale bread gesturing with it as he spoke. “We had a lab in South City. Building better soldiers with human transmutation theory.”

Roy choked on his roast beef. “Are you _serious_?”

“No,” Kimberly said blithely, grinning. “You should have seen the look on your face, though.”

 **4 Civil war**

“I just don’t understand why we’re fighting,” Roy said one evening. “What do they have to gain from this war?”

“Nothing,” Kimberly said simply. He sprawled across his bunk, studying his nails, smiling again. “Just like us.”

“Then why,” Roy began, and Kimberly didn’t let him finish.

“Why do you start these conversations with me? It’s the same thing.” He looked up, so smug and content Roy wanted to hit him. “You’ll never get the answer you want out of me, Mustang. And you’ll keep asking anyway, every time you have to go out there. It’s the human fucking condition.”

 **5 Illness**

 _He’s sick_ , the other alchemists said, quietly, when Kimberly wasn’t around to hear. _Disturbed._ And then, to Roy, _Have you tried to get your room changed? Surely if you told somebody…_

The thing Roy couldn’t admit to them was that he didn’t really _want_ to get his room changed. That he wasn’t afraid of Kimberly as much as he was fascinated by him. Maybe if Hughes had been there, he could have talked some sense into Roy, but Hughes had gotten himself a desk job back in Central, so Roy was alone out here. Alone, with Kimberly. And he stayed.

 **6 Scar**

Kimberly had no shame, stripping with the lights on, almost daring Roy to watch. There was a long, jagged line of scar across his right side, that always caught Roy’s eye.

The fourth or fifth time, Kimberly saw him looking. “You like it?” he asked, running long fingers over the scar, slow as a striptease.

“What happened?” Roy asked.

“Broken glass,” Kimberly purred. “Got shoved through a window as a kid. There are more, but you have to get closer to see them.” Pause. “ _Much_ closer.”

Almost everything Kimberly said was a lie. Roy was suddenly too hard to care.

 **7 Detested likeness**

“You’re like me,” Kimberly said after the first time, Roy still pinned under him, their bodies slick against each other with sweat, the room thick with the sharp musk of sex. “That’s why.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Roy managed, shifting uncomfortably, waiting for Kimberly to pull out.

“Maybe not,” Kimberly granted, licking at Roy’s neck, not moving, still hard. “Maybe you’ve learned that much. But you were wondering.”

“I’m not like you,” Roy protested. He felt too aware of Kimberly’s hands on him. “I’m not like you at all.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Kimberly murmured, and started thrusting again.

 **8 Sorrow or heartbreak?**

Kimberly probably didn’t know he did it. Roy couldn’t see him being the type to have roommates voluntarily, or to take lovers and then let them stay the night.

But most nights, within an hour of the lights going out, he’d start making noise: little whimpers, choked and helpless sounds, as he thrashed in the sheets. It didn’t always wake Roy up, but more often than not he would wind up lying awake in the top bunk, listening to Kimberly’s nightmares.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have changed anything. But those lost, frightened sounds broke Roy’s heart, every time.

 **9 In his heart**

This was all wrong, and it bothered Roy more every day. There was no point to being out here, no reason to keep fighting this war. It was making all of them sick — or sicker, he thought, remembering how Kimberly seemed to be getting worse.

It was all wrong, and here he was anyway: following orders, killing people who’d done nothing to deserve it, having sex with the most dangerous person he’d met since he got here. This war was doing terrible things to all of them, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stop it.

 **10 Confrontation**

“What the fuck was that for?” His hands fisted in Kimberly’s shirt, dragging the bastard close, before he’d even had time to think. “He was just a _kid_!”

Kimberly didn’t even look worried, calm and hateful as always, smiling as he reached up and wrapped his bloody hands around Roy’s wrists, as a building in the next street roared with an explosion and collapsed.

“You’ve forgotten what I do,” he accused, fingers tightening, soot smudged on his cheek, yellow eyes bright. “You’re fighting a war, Mustang, but I’m a killer. I don’t need reasons.”

Roy pulled away to be sick.

 **11 Contact**

Any time they were within arm’s reach of each other, sometimes even in public, Kimberly would have his hands on Roy’s body somewhere. From somebody else, it would have been affectionate; from Kimberly, it was a threat.

He admitted it once, in line in the mess hall, palm pressed flat against the small of Roy’s back as he leaned in: “I could kill you right now.” When Roy jumped, and pulled away wide-eyed, Kimberly laughed softly. “I’m not _going_ to,” he smirked. “Honestly, Mustang, I’m hurt that you don’t trust me.”

Kimberly kept touching him. And Roy stopped flinching.

 **12 Blood**

The water ran red when Kimberly showered after patrols, other people’s blood sluicing down his body to pool at his feet. Roy tried not to look, tried not to think about who Kimberly’d killed and how much fun he’d had, tried not to admit that he was glad the blood wasn’t Kimberly’s this time either.

“Come here,” Kimberly said, holding out one deadly hand, dripping rust-red.

“You’re sick,” Roy whispered, but he went, slipping into Kimberly’s embrace, reaching up with soapy hands to work dried blood out of Kimberly’s hair.

“I know,” Kimberly smiled. “You too.” And kissed him.

 **13 Trembling**

They didn’t fuck every night. Roy suspected that Kimberly didn’t want to make a habit of it, didn’t want to act like he needed it. So there’d be two, three nights in a row where they didn’t even see each other, much less get in bed.

Then Kimberly would decide to make up for it all at once, and he’d climb up to Roy’s bunk without even asking, roll on top of him and push him down into the mattress, and they’d fuck for hours, until Roy was too weak and shaky to move when Kimberly pulled out at last.

 **14 Pupil**

“Your eyes give nothing away,” Kimberly said one night, staring into them, touching Roy’s face in what would, in anyone else, be a caress. “They’re so dark. You could hide what you were thinking, if you cared to try.”

“Thank you?” Roy hazarded. He was almost certain Kimberly meant well, meant it as a compliment. There was something almost human behind Kimberly’s jackal eyes right then, too, a spark of connection in their depths.

Kimberly pressed his palm to Roy’s cheek, smiling when Roy tensed involuntarily. “Thank me when you start taking my advice,” he murmured, and kissed Roy gently.

 **15 Burnt field**

The night before, there’d been houses here, streets, trees, places where people lived and worked and played. Now there was nothing, just a flat plain, scorched black, heaped with rubble in isolated spots. Roy stood there, staring, trying to make sense of the devastation, trying to swallow the nausea at the knowledge that he would have to help do this again.

Kimberly came up behind him, slid long lean arms around his waist. “Punishing yourself? Or admiring my work?”

Roy pulled away, his skin crawling, the back of his neck prickling with animal revulsion. “Don’t touch me, Kimberly. Just don’t.”

 **16 Ring**

He could feel the power humming in the red stone as soon as he touched it, and in other circumstances it would have been thrilling, the ability to do so much more. But not here, not like this — in the depths of the stone he could almost see his flames already alight.

Kimberly found him sitting there, staring down at his hand, enthralled by the horror he’d just been handed.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Kimberly rasped, crouched in front of him, hands resting on his knees.

“It’s terrible,” Roy whispered.

“Yes.” Kimberly smiled, stroked Roy’s fingers. “That’s what I said.”

 **17 Purification of soul**

They said fire purified. That it destroyed the impurities in anything it touched. Roy struggled into his uniform as the sun went down, feeling like he’d never been more _im_ pure: he felt sore from Kimberly fucking him; sick from the orders they’d just gotten; disgusted at the knowledge that he would pull his gloves on, wear the red stone he’d been given and go out tonight to kill people who had no chance of fighting back. Beside him, Kimberly dressed too, humming tunelessly. It would take a hotter fire than Roy could kindle to burn away this sense of horror.

 **18 Empty**

Kimberly sat across from him in the transport, in the same bastardized lotus position as the first time Roy’d met him. “Clear your head,” he murmured, gold eyes unnaturally bright in the darkness. “Let your attachments go.”

“Easy for you to say,” Roy snapped, glaring back. Kimberly as deranged prophet — all this war needed, really.

“This is a world of shells,” Kimberly continued, implacable, calm. “We are all hollow, and none of this has meaning. Let go.”

“I can’t,” Roy said softly. “I can’t.”

Kimberly shook his head, and his expression looked almost like sympathy. “Then this will destroy you.”

 **19 Death**

The Ishvarites died by the thousand that night. Roy didn’t even know how many he killed himself. All of the alchemists were guilty of it, the roar of cannons and the shudder of falling buildings and the screams of the dying, the stench of blood and gunpowder heavy on the air. Roy told himself it was the smoke stinging his eyes that made them tear up, but he knew it was far more than that: the broken, burned bodies falling; the snap and echo of rifle rounds, as the infantry mopped up after them; and over it all, Kimberly, laughing.

 **20 The end**

They had to carry Kimberly out on a stretcher. Roy saw him go, shaking and pale, yellow eyes staring blindly, tattooed hands twitching weakly where they’d been strapped down. The chain around his neck was bare — he’d used up the whole red stone in one night.

 _Court martial_ , people said. _Execution._ And somebody, a little too far away for Roy to identify, a little more honest: _They’ll have to put him down like a mad dog._

Roy stood watching until the ambulance was out of sight. The war was over; Ishvar was destroyed; Kimberly was gone. Only his nightmares remained.


End file.
